West-of-the-Mississippi....

[xaelia]

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Due to family concerns, I am endeavoring to escape the Midwest and, at least, hopefully, be no further east than Denver. A lot has already been said (but feel free to add more) about some of the better known programs, but I was curious what comments, good, bad, anecdotal or hearsay, people might have about these left-coast programs:

University of California, Irvine
University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Francisco
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Davis
University of Southern California
Stanford University
California Pacific Medical Center
University of Colorado
University of Washington
Oregon Health and Science University

I know there a couple more, but I'm not in the military, I don't think I'm a Loma Linda kind of guy, and Charles Drew rather frightens me....

 

[JR]

A lot of these programs have been discussed in detail before. Have you tried doing a search?

 

[Ophtho24]

I hate to tell you this, but most of those programs are extremely competetive. It is actually surprisingly hard to even get an interview at most of those places. They also don't even interview very many people (probably because they only get down to like 2 spots past the total number of positions that they have on their rank lists.) Can it be done, yes, but it is not as simple as saying "I want to match in the south/ midwest." This being said I would say that if you can match at any of those programs you will recieve great training. CPMC offers tremendous volume for surgery, as does UC Davis. I have heard great things about UC Irvine. OHSU is a great program. The other ones are also very good. From my interviewing experience I was not as impressed with UW (they currently have no chair) but the program is still strong and Seattle is a great place to live. I wish you the best of luck. I have been in your shoes, trying to match on the West Coast (also for family reasons) and it is a painful and stressful ordeal. If you go to a big name school in the midwest that will undoubtedly help your chances, but the west is still a very tough area of the country for most specialties and ophthalmology is certainly no exception.